A look back at some really old comics by an even older comics fan

Month: June 2018

The topic of today’s post is, I believe, one of the most important single comic books in the evolution of Batman to appear during the character’s nearly eighty-year history — probably ranking in the top five or so such comics. Chronologically speaking, it’s certainly the most important Batman comic that DC Comics had published since 1964’s Detective Comics #327, the issue in which editor Julius Schwartz and artist Carmine Infantino debuted a “New Look” for the Caped Crusader — and I think that a strong case can be made that there wouldn’t be another single Bat-book quite so significant until the publication of the first installment of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight, in 1986.

That’s because “The Track of the Hook”, written by Bob Haney and illustrated by Neal Adams, serves as the clearest point of origin for the most thorough overhaul ever of one of comics’ most iconic heroes — an overhaul that has often been called a return to the character’s original 1939 roots, but is probably more accurately viewed as an approach based on what comics writer Denny O’Neil once described as “remembering how we thought it should have been” [emphasis mine]. It was an approach which returned an air of mystery, a touch of noir, to Batman and his milieu — one which did indeed recover visual and thematic elements that had been present, or at least implicit, in the character’s earliest published adventures, but which explored and elaborated on those elements in a more sophisticated fashion than readers had ever seen before. And it all started with Brave and the Bold #79, and the art of Neal Adams. Read More

As regular readers of this blog will know, I somehow managed to get through the first five months or so of being a regular buyer and reader of Marvel Comics without picking up a single book featuring the work of perhaps the single most important architect of that publisher’s fictional universe — that would be Jack “King” Kirby, of course — but, come June, 1968, I went on a Kirby tear, buying not one, not two, but three different comic books that showcased the King’s art.

Of course, Daredevil #43 could only boast a cover by Kirby, as the interior art was by the book’s regular penciler, Gene Colan (with embellishment by inker Vince Coletta). And since I was by this time a regular purchaser of the Man Without Fear’s title, the fact is that I would have bought this issue even if the cover had been by Colan, rather than Kirby — which, as the penciled art shown to the lower right should indicate, it indeed almost was. Read More

Honestly, I have no idea why it took so long for me to buy my first issue of Fantastic Four. After all, I’d been watching their Saturday morning TV cartoon since September, 1967, same as I’d been watching Spider-Man, which had premiered at the same time. But while I’d started picking up Spidey’s monthly comic in January, 1968, it took me another five months to take the plunge with the FF.

As I speculated in last week’s post about Captain America #105, it may have been that I was a little leery of Jack Kirby’s artwork, which looked different than the art in any other comic I was reading. Or, possibly, I was waiting for the continued story that, thanks to the issue descriptions featured in the monthly “Mighty Marvel Checklist”, I knew had been running since issue #74 — involving Galactus, the Silver Surfer, and Psycho-Man — to wrap up, so that I wouldn’t be jumping in in the middle of a storyline. At this late date, I have no way of knowing for sure. But in any event, when I saw #78 on the spinner rack in June of 1968, I was ready at last to put Marvel’s claim of global preeminence to the test. Read More

In June, 1968, almost a year after buying my first Marvel comic, and about five months after I started picking up the publisher’s books on a regular basis, I finally bought my first comic book featuring the work of the man who was probably the single most important architect of the “House of Ideas” (as they liked to call it back then) — Jack Kirby. That book was Captain America #105 — the subject of this week’s blog post.

Allow me to explain that ambiguous statement. The fact is, both of those books came out in the first half of June, 1968 — and as I didn’t necessarily get to the Tote-Sum or one of my other comics outlets every single week back in those days, I can’t just go by which one would have reached stores the earliest. And since I have no specific recollection of which I bought first (and it’s quite possible that I picked them up together, on the same day), I’m going to blog first about the one with the earlier “official” publication date according to the Library of Congress’ records (as reported by Mike’s Amazing World) — and that’s CA #105 (published June 4th) rather than FF #78 (published June 11th). I wish I could be more certain that this one is the first, but this is the best I can do with the information (and poor memory) that I’ve got.

Still — to my mind, the more interesting question isn’t which Marvel comic by Jack Kirby I bought first, but rather, why did it take me so long to buy a Marvel comic by Jack Kirby in the first place? Read More